Rock and Metal News & Reviews – No Bull!

Menu

Monthly Archives: September 2017

British heavy metal legends SAXON have completed recording their new album, “Thunderbolt”, for a tentative early 2018 release. Singer Biff Byford tells Myglobamind: “I finished doing the vocals on September 20th, and Andy Sneap is mixing it at the moment. It sounds really good. There are no big surprises on the CD. We haven’t turned into Lady Gaga. [Laughs] I like Lady Gaga, as it’s a bit of a compliment. We haven’t changed into a different kind of band.”

The follow-up to 2015’s “Battering Ram”, “Thunderbolt” will feature the song “They Played Rock And Roll”, written about and dedicated to MOTÖRHEAD. Byford previously said that he gave the track that title because “that’s what Lemmy used to say every night [from the stage].” He added: “It’s basically about early MOTÖRHEAD — ’79/’80 MOTÖRHEAD, like around ‘No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith’, ’cause that’s the tour we were on, that one. So, yeah, it’s about the band, really, and their music.”

According to Biff, “They Played Rock And Roll” will be musically similar to Lemmy and Co. He explained: “I asked Nibbs [Carter, SAXON bassist] to write me some music that was like MOTÖRHEAD, and he did. So it sounds very MOTÖRHEAD-ish, but not MOTÖRHEAD, if you know what I mean.”

Regarding the “Thunderbolt” album title, Byford said: “‘Thunderbolt’ is about Greek gods, so I read up on Greek mythology. There’s not really that much. Homer had some writings… I made most of it up, but it’s based on Zeus and Poseidon and Hades, so it’s got a bit of good and a bit of evil in it, so it’s pretty cool. Obviously Zeus‘s sign was a thunderbolt and his sign was an eagle holding a lightning bolt.”

David Coverdale has confirmed to Ultimate Classic Rock that WHITESNAKE is working on music for a new album, tentatively due in early 2018. “We’ve never had such an immense amount of positive material,” he said. “I’ve worked, for the first time as writers, with [WHITESNAKE guitarists] Reb Beach and with Joel Hoekstra. Because when Joel came in, we were doing ‘The Purple Album’, of course. And not only do we have great Coverdale/Hoekstra and Coverdale/Beach songs, but we have the three of us combining [as writers].”

He continued: “The songs are fucking excellent. We have eighteen or nineteen extraordinarily positive, potent, juicy classic WHITESNAKE songs, from balls-to-the-wall [rockers] to blues, to epics to ballads. It’s kickass. It’s definitely got me fluffed up. That will be [coming out in] late spring next year. We’re looking at getting out [on tour] in the U.S. around June, so probably May.”

According to Coverdale, another project that is in the works is a DVD that was filmed during WHITESNAKE‘s tour in support of the group’s latest disc, “The Purple Album”. That effort, which was released in May 2015 via Frontiers Music Srl, was billed as “a re-imagination of classic songs from Coverdale‘s time as the lead singer for DEEP PURPLE‘s Mark III and Mark IV studio albums.” Coverdale was DEEP PURPLE‘s frontman from late 1973 to early 1976 and sang on the albums “Burn”, “Stormbringer” and “Come Taste The Band”.

Coverdale told Ultimate Classic Rock about the upcoming DVD: “It’s fucking fantastic. I’m going from talking with you guys to finishing off the edit today. We’re doing the last tweaks and then delivering it to Warners. It’s kickass. To promote it, we’ve put together WHITESNAKE as you’ve never seen them before on a video for ‘Burn’. It is un-fucking-believable. It’s a full-production video. And we’re still tweaking, but the people at Warners who have seen it, they’re mindblown by it. We worked with a young, hip gunslinger Canadian director called Tyler Bourns. And he’s kick-fucking-ass. He did all of the videos with us on ‘The Purple Album’. He’s the head of our video creative ops and a great guy as well.”

Also coming from the WHITESNAKE camp is “a fucking huge coffee table book” that is “about the size of a fucking huge encyclopedia, a historical photographic journey from the beginning of ‘The Purple Album’ to the end of the last show in the U.K. in Sheffield,” according to Coverdale. “We were supposed to have this out for last Christmas, but I was so exhausted, coming off the road,” he said. “So, better late than never. It’s still only a year and a half old. The book’s fucking beautiful to have. It’s going to be a WHITESNAKE Christmas, without a doubt.”

WHITESNAKE‘s self-titled album, also known in some countries as “1987”, which was certified multi-platinum and featured the smash single “Here I Go Again”, turns thirty this year and Rhino is celebrating with four new versions, including an expansive boxed set.

“Whitesnake: Super Deluxe Edition” will be available on October 6 for $49.98. The 4-CD/DVD collection includes the original album with newly remastered sound, unreleased live and studio recordings, classic music videos, concert footage, a thirty-minute documentary, featuring a new interview with Coverdale,. The music comes with a sixty-page hardbound book that’s filled with rare and unseen photos from the era, an extended essay based on new interviews with Coverdale, plus a booklet of the album’s lyrics, handwritten by Coverdale. The audio will also be available via digital download and streaming services.

Los Angeles rockers BLACK VEIL BRIDES will release their fifth album, “Vale”, on January 12 via Lava/Universal Republic. The follow-up to BLACK VEIL BRIDES‘ 2014 self-titled effort, which was originally expected to arrive in September, was produced by John Feldmann at his Southern California studio.

BLACK VEIL BRIDES frontman Andy Biersack said: “We cannot wait for the BVB army to hear ‘Vale’ in its entirety!

“In my opinion, this record is the most complete and exciting album we have done to date.

“The opportunity to work with John Feldmann once again over the course of the past two years creating ‘Vale’ was an incredible experience and I am thrilled with the collection of songs we have put together as a band.

“The Latin translation of ‘Vale’ is ‘be well, be strong!’ and central to the message of this record.

“We hope to continue to inspire our fans and friends to embrace their own individuality and inner strength.

“The central narrative once again finds ‘The Wild Ones’ characters facing the challenge of moving on from the pain and anguish of their past and looking to a new chapter in their lives. This concept is one that is near to my heart and I believe will resonate with those that find themselves cast on the fringe of society.

“From our inception, BLACK VEIL BRIDES have stood up for the outcasts and disenfranchised. With this album, [we] hope to give you hope, fun and most importantly a kickass rock and roll record.”

The songs from the disc, “The Outsider” and “My Vow”, can be streamed below.

“Vale” track listing:

01. Incipiens Ad Finem
02. The Last One
03. Wake Up
04. When They Call My Name
05. The Outsider
06. Dead Man Walking (Overture II)
07. Our Destiny
08. The King Of Pain
09. My Cow
10. Ballad Of The Lonely Hearts
11. Throw The First Stone
12. Vale (This Is Where It Ends)

During a recent interview with the Rock Sound Podcast, Biersack explained the delay in getting the new disc released. He said: “First of all, we took fifteen months to make the record, and so in that way, we really wanted everything to be as perfect as possible. And the original deadline that we gave ourselves while the record was completed and the mixing was completed, we weren’t able to get the artwork and assets and all the stuff together exactly how we wanted it. And while listening to it, there were also elements and stuff I wanted to change.

“People don’t necessarily understand that when you’re on a major label that they determine when stuff is released,” he continued. “And so they gave us the initial deadline that they would have preferred we released the record on the first time, and they were just unable to get the assets together, and also on our end, we just weren’t quite done at the original time. So we had a discussion with the label and they were in agreement with us that it seemed like we should try to line it up with something big tour-wise.”

Biersack delved deeper into BLACK VEIL BRIDES‘ reasons for wanting to take a bit longer to make an album they were all really happy with, explaining: “We’ve been doing this for a very long time, and it seemed like if we were gonna take time to make a record, it seemed like the right time to really try to sink our teeth into doing something that we really spent time cultivating. Before, it’s not to say that we didn’t spend time with it, but we were on deadlines and we were also a very young band that people were saying, ‘We’ve gotta get this record out. We’ve gotta get you on tour.’ And we’ve never really been afforded the opportunity to take our time with something.

“We wound up doing it in three different locations with Feldmann, because he wound up moving studios in the middle of the record,” he added. “So it was kind of fun record in the sense that I sang the vocals for it in so many different places and I saw so many different rooms and the writing process took place in so many different places while I was on tour, and we were at Jake‘s [Pitts, guitar] personal home studio for a while. And it was a really fun and interesting way of doing the album over the course of over a year.”

Asked about the overall sound of the new BLACK VEIL BRIDES album, Andy said: “We made ‘Wretched And Divine [The Story Of The Wild Ones]’ with John in 2013, and that was, at least commercially, our most successful record to date. A song like ‘In The End’ is probably our most successful song. And so a lot of times, people point to that record as the sound of the band. But what I think is interesting is that we have evolved significantly, I think, from record to record — from the first record to the fifth record. The previous record that we made with [producer] Bob Rock was a much more straight-ahead, hard rock, heavy metal record. I think that this album — and everybody says this, of course, because you want it to be true — but at least for me, I believe that it’s a nice combination of many different eras of the band. I think that it represents all the different places that we’ve been while retaining that Feldmann thing, that thing about Feldy that I don’t think anybody else can even touch or come close to; he just knows how to make things huge. And writing with Feldy is one of my favorite things, so to be able to come back into the world of doing heavy, darker rock music after doing a pop record together [with ANDY BLACK].

“We’ve been in a band together — Jake and Jinxx [guitar] and Ashley [Purdy, bass] and C.C. [Christian Coma, drums] and I — have been a band together for a decade, we know each other pretty well and the writing process is pretty simple in that way. So I think, all in all, it’s a record that’s very representative of where we are as a band at this point in our career. I’m not gonna tell you, ‘Well, it’s our heaviest and most melodic,’ or, ‘This is the best…’ I think that it’s just a record that we’re really, really proud of and I think it’s a great album and I think the fans are gonna like it, and it’s a long time coming. At this point, it’ll be four years since the last BLACK VEIL record, by the time it’s out. So I think it’s a long time coming, and I think people are gonna really enjoy it.”

BLACK VEIL BRIDES will embark on a North American co-headline tour, dubbed “The Resurrection Tour”, with ASKING ALEXANDRIA, kicking off January 10 at The Complex in Salt Lake City, Utah, rolling through major markets coast to coast, and concluding in Las Vegas, Nevada at House of Blues on March 2. CROWN THE EMPIRE will act as support on all dates.

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS hope to announce the results of their singer search in the next few weeks, nearly two years after the passing of original vocalist Scott Weiland and more than two months following the death of Weiland‘s replacement, Chester Bennington.

“We’ve been working with someone — I don’t want to name names yet — and we’re making music,” bassist Robert DeLeo told Rolling Stone in a new interview. “I don’t know if he’s well known or unknown; I don’t look at him as ‘well known.’ But we’re writing music and we’re hopefully looking at finishing a record and putting it out soon.”

Guitarist Dean DeLeo told Los Angeles radio station KLOS on Friday (September 22) that STP‘s search for a new singer was “looking good, man. Looking good. New music. And it won’t be too long.”

STP has been without a vocalist since November 2015, when Bennington — who joined the group in early 2013 — departed to spend more time with his main band LINKIN PARK.

Weiland, who reunited with the group in 2010 after an eight-year hiatus but was dismissed in 2013, died in December 2015 of a drug overdose while on a solo tour.

STP last performed live, with Bennington on vocals, for a one-off reunion performance in California in March 2016.

The band held an open call for singers last year, reportedly receiving thousands of submissions and narrowing that down to a handful of prospects with whom the group members got together to jam.

Two of the names that have been widely circulated among fans are one-time “X Factor” contestant Jeff Gutt and Filipino vocalist John Borja. Gutt reportedly rehearsed with the group last May, while Borja recently applied for a U.S. work visa and has hinted at joining the band.

The DeLeo brothers are currently promoting the twenty-fifth anniversary expanded reissue of STP‘s debut album, “Core”, which arrives this Friday (September 29) — twenty-five years to the day of the LP’s original release.

A&E Network hits the road with rock legend Ozzy Osbourne, and his adventure-loving son, Jack, as they travel across America on the road trip of a lifetime in season two of “Ozzy & Jack’s World Detour”. Ten one-hour episodes will chronicle the cross-country journey beginning Wednesday, November 8 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on A&E.

“I am so excited to be back for a second season because it means my dad didn’t kill me or cause too much destruction last season,” said executive producer Jack Osbourne. “But you never know what will happen this time around!”

“We are grateful to Ozzy and Jack for allowing us into their lives for an unfiltered look at their relationship while on this exciting journey together,” said Elaine Frontain Bryant, executive vice president and head of programming, A&E Network. “Beyond the highly entertaining road trip adventure, the series’ focus on the deep bond between a father and his son offers viewers the personal connection they look for in our programming.”

Growing up the son of a music legend, Jack missed his father who was often away from home on tour. Now they are making up for lost time with the ultimate father-and-son bonding experience, an extreme road trip in a vintage 1973 GMC camper — the same model that Ozzy‘s band, BLACK SABBATH, used when they first began touring in America. This season, Ozzy and Jack travel thousands of miles across the country from Florida to Alaska and experience everything from unique local attractions to quintessential American pastimes. Whether they are deep sea fishing in Key West, experiencing a NASCAR race in Texas, camping with Jack‘s daughter in Sedona, dogsledding in Alaska, or traveling with Sharon and the family to Hawaii, Ozzy and Jack approach every adventure with humor, heart, and rock n’ roll spirit.

Ozzy admitted a while back that doing the show has helped fill some gaps in his own knowledge of history. “Anything past World War II, I’m clueless,” he told The Pulse Of Radio. “I’m kind of up on World War II ’cause I was born a couple of years after. So I know quite a lot about World War II and Hitler and the Nazis and all that. But anything from before or after I don’t know anything about. So we’re going to Mount Rushmore, we’re going to the abandoned silos where you guys, America used to have their Minutemen missiles and all that. It’s quite educational for me, actually.”

Ozzy had not starred in a regularly scheduled TV series since the MTV reality show “The Osbournes” ended a four-season run in 2005. A variety show called “Osbournes Reloaded” ended after one episode on Fox in 2009.

FOZZY — the band featuring WWE wrestling superstar Chris Jericho alongside members of STUCK MOJO — will embark on “Fozzy Across America” next month. The event will consist of three live performances in three separate cities and three different timezones in just one day — a feat that has never been attempted before by any other group.

In a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, FOZZY is allowing fans a chance to buy a seat on the private jet that will fly “Fozzy Across America” on October 14 via the band’s new “Judas”PledgeMusic campaign.

Jericho states: “We are stoked to team up with PledgeMusic for the release of our new record, ‘Judas’, featuring the modern-rock classic title track, its follow-up sure to be smash ‘Painless’ and the kick-ass banger ‘Drinkin With Jesus’!

“Now you have the option of simply buying the digital download of the new record or exploring all sorts of exclusive offers only offered here- from exclusive colored vinyl LPs, to original lyric sheets with handwritten studio notes, to private guitar lessons and Q&As with the band, to a seat on the private jet flying ‘Fozzy Across America’ on October 14! Every pledge comes with a digital version of the record and gives you access to exclusive behind-the-scenes tour updates as we hit the road September 26 – October 8th and again on October 14!

“Be sure to share this with all your friends and thank you for your support! Remember, FOZZY is band owned and fan operated and this is our gift to you! Let us know what you think. We look forward to rocking with you very soon!

“Fozzy Across America” – October 14, 2017: Three Cities, Three Shows, Three Timezones, One Day!

FOZZY‘s “Judas” album will be released on October 13 via Century Media.

Regarding what fans can expect from the new disc, Jericho told “The Front Row Report”: “It’s definitely the next step. It’s an extension. It’s more of an evolving FOZZY. We really put a lot of stock in bands like U2 and GUNS N’ ROSES and METALLICA, and I think the best example might be David Bowie, where there’s always different styles, different eras, and we like that too. And we’re not completely changing what we do. But there’s different more melodies and this is very much a hookier record. There’s not as many guitar solos on the record, but it’s still heavy and melodic. It’s an evolution from ‘Do You Wanna Start A War’ [2014] as much as ‘Do You Wanna Start A War’ was an evolution from ‘Sin And Bones’ [2012]. I think it’s a great trilogy of records that shows a lot of growth, but it’s still very heavy and very melodic. Like I said, the trilogy of records — from ‘Sin And Bones’ to ‘Judas’ — I think they’re all very great records that have a little bit different elements to them all, which is a key to longevity for sure.”

Jericho also talked about the songwriting process for “Judas”, which was composed during late 2015 and most of 2016 while FOZZY took a break from the road.

“We never really sit in a room and write,” he said. “In the past, I would write my parts and send them over to [guitarist] Rich [Ward] and Rich would send it back to me. Also, we had Johnny Andrews writing with us for the whole record. He wrote ‘Lights Go Out’ on the last record, so we wanted him involved. He produced the record, so Rich and him did a lot of sessions [in the studio where they spent many hours] jamming it out… We wanted to give him total control and let him produce the record and make the record that he thought we should make, and we’re really happy that we did.”

FOZZY recently announced the return of bassist Paul Di Leo. Paul previously played with FOZZY between 2011 and 2014 and appeared on the group’s last two studio albums.

After “Do You Wanna Start A War”‘s release, Di Leo was replaced on the road by Jeff Rouse and later by Randy Drake.

BLACK VEIL BRIDES are back. To launch into 2018, the Los Angeles rock powerhouse will embark on a North American co-headline tour, dubbed “The Resurrection Tour”, with ASKING ALEXANDRIA, kicking off January 10 at The Complex in Salt Lake City, Utah, rolling through major markets coast to coast, and concluding in Las Vegas, Nevada at House of Blues on March 2. CROWN THE EMPIRE will act as support on all dates.

A special BLABBERMOUTH.NET presale will begin on Wednesday, September 27 at 10:00 a.m. local time and end on Thursday, September 28 at 10:00 p.m. local time. When prompted, type in the presale code “BLABBVBAA” to access tickets before the general public.

BLACK VEIL BRIDES are planning to release their fifth album in early 2018. The follow-up to BLACK VEIL BRIDES‘ 2014 self-titled effort, which was originally expected to arrive in September, was produced by John Feldmann at his Southern California studio.

Asked about the overall sound of the new BLACK VEIL BRIDES album, vocalist Andy Biersack told the Rock Sound Podcast: “We made ‘Wretched And Divine [The Story Of The Wild Ones]’ with John in 2013, and that was, at least commercially, our most successful record to date. A song like ‘In The End’ is probably our most successful song. And so a lot of times, people point to that record as the sound of the band. But what I think is interesting is that we have evolved significantly, I think, from record to record — from the first record to the fifth record. The previous record that we made with [producer] Bob Rock was a much more straight-ahead, hard rock, heavy metal record. I think that this album — and everybody says this, of course, because you want it to be true — but at least for me, I believe that it’s a nice combination of many different eras of the band. I think that it represents all the different places that we’ve been while retaining that Feldmann thing, that thing about Feldy that I don’t think anybody else can even touch or come close to; he just knows how to make things huge. And writing with Feldy is one of my favorite things, so to be able to come back into the world of doing heavy, darker rock music after doing a pop record together [with ANDY BLACK].

“We’ve been in a band together — Jake and Jinxx [guitar] and Ashley [Purdy, bass] and C.C. [Christian Coma, drums] and I — have been a band together for a decade, we know each other pretty well and the writing process is pretty simple in that way. So I think, all in all, it’s a record that’s very representative of where we are as a band at this point in our career. I’m not gonna tell you, ‘Well, it’s our heaviest and most melodic,’ or, ‘This is the best…’ I think that it’s just a record that we’re really, really proud of and I think it’s a great album and I think the fans are gonna like it, and it’s a long time coming. At this point, it’ll be four years since the last BLACK VEIL record, by the time it’s out. So I think it’s a long time coming, and I think people are gonna really enjoy it.”

ASKING ALEXANDRIA last week dropped the official video for a new song called “Into The Fire”. The track marks the group’s first recording with singer Danny Worsnop since he rejoined ASKING ALEXANDRIA last fall.

“Into The Fire” will appear on ASKING ALEXANDRIA‘s next studio LP, which will be released on December 15 via Sumerian. The disc was produced by FROM FIRST TO LAST‘s Matt Good and mixed by Taylor Larson.

The reunion between Danny and ASKING ALEXANDRIA was confirmed last October following weeks of rumors and speculation regarding the status of his replacement, Denis Shaforostov, who joined the band in 2015.

Danny, who released a solo album, “The Long Road Home”, in February while still being involved with his other band WE ARE HARLOT in between acting gigs, told Finland’s Kaaos TV that he is working closely with the members of ASKING ALEXANDRIA to ensure that he is able to pursue other projects alongside his touring and recording activities with AA.

When Danny‘s return to ASKING ALEXANDRIA was first announced, Bruce said in a video message that Shaforostov had “just stopped talking to us.” But Denis later tweeted, “I left AA because I can’t be in a touring band at this point in my life. There’s no drama and I don’t want to be a part of it.